Lydia Humenycky was inspired by travel and study to reach out to the people of Togo as a Peace corps Volunteer

Togo's insect life freaked out the young American -- her first nights in the country were a nightmare of creepy-crawlies swarming, seemingly everywhere, including the outdoor latrines, yet another unpleasant discovery. Humenycky was dismayed and slightly unnerved by the predatory tendencies of the typical Togoian male, whose sense of romantic fidelity is remarkably tenuous: rare is the adult male with but one wife. Humenycky said every day brought her yet another proposal of marriage. As for her Peace Corps work, it took a while for Humenycky to hit the mark. It didn't always seem that her first-world ways had a place in Togo's third-world economy. The bumpy ride ended when she met a group of independent coffee growers struggling to establish their business. "We did some basic things together but to them it was huge." Proper accounting practices, use of the computer and marketing are not normally relevant to the Togoian business model.

Caption: Lydia Humenycky was inspired by travel and study to reach out to the people of a foreign land. Photo: Eric Schmadel/Tribune-Review

Lydia Humenycky may have left her Peace Corps post in Togo, a mud-hut, dirt-poor country in western Africa. But the 26-year-old from North Huntingdon has not given up on the people she met there.

Humenycky, a graduate of Westminster College and Hempfield Area High School, spent two years in Togo, where the per capita income is $350 a year and where the weather at least is predictable. She laughingly described Togo's seasons as "hot and humid, hot and dry, dry and rainy, always hot."

A business administration and marketing major in college, Humenycky had no initial inkling that the Peace Corps was in her future. Founded in 1961, in the midst of the Cold War, the Peace Corps was designed as a way to harness the talents of individual Americans in the service of countries and peoples struggling to break the bonds of mass misery.

The Peace Corps showed up in Togo in 1962 and has been there ever since. A total of 141 Peace Corps volunteers are in Togo.

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Humenycky said she awoke one day to the realization that the Peace Corps was something she might like to do.

Working in Pittsburgh as an advertising account executive, Humenycky was becoming restless and yearned for something more. She wanted to travel but have the opportunity to test her talents as a thinker and innovator in an environment that might not be altogether hospitable.

"I saw where my (advertising) job was going to take me," she said. "I thought (the Peace Corps) was an interesting alternative."

As a teenager, Humenycky's taste for foreign travel was whetted by missionary trips to Mexico and the Bahamas. As a student at Westminster, she spent a semester of study in Ireland.

She found these experiences riveting. "I like people who are different than myself," said Humenycky, adding she was also humbled by her overseas sojourns. "I felt embarrassed at how little I knew about other countries."

Togo was not Humenycky's first choice for a Peace Corps assignment. That would have been the Ukraine, the former Soviet state that gained its independence following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Although her father Ray was born in the United States, his parents were native Ukrainians, having escaped to the United States at the end of World War II.

Humenycky's second choice was any country in Latin America. Having taken French in high school, she drew Togo, a former French colony.

Tom Niggel of Greensburg served in the Peace Corps for two years beginning in 1967. Mike Atherton, a professor of philosophy at Seton Hill University, was a four-year Peace Corps volunteer starting in 1969. According to both men, the Peace Corps changed their lives.

Niggel, who works for Excela Health Care, recalled bad times and good in Honduras: a weeklong student riot that resulted in his being held as a hostage and meeting his future wife, a volunteer for the British equivalent of the Peace Corps.

Atherton said he got his idealist's naivete knocked out of him, finding the natives of Swaziland, a small country completely surrounded by South Africa, to be very human, neither angels nor bogeymen. "I came back a little bemused by people," he recalled.

Atherton's most lasting impression of Swaziland was realized only years later. As a young teacher at a middle school, he had taught native boys and girls to play volleyball. On a recent trip to Swaziland, he returned to his old school and found volleyball was still being played.

Although different in particulars, Humenycky's experiences in Togo were not all that dissimilar to the earlier Peace Corps volunteers Niggel and Atherton: a combination of astonishment and a sense of progress, however halting.

Togo's insect life freaked out the young American -- her first nights in the country were a nightmare of creepy-crawlies swarming, seemingly everywhere, including the outdoor latrines, yet another unpleasant discovery.

Humenycky was dismayed and slightly unnerved by the predatory tendencies of the typical Togoian male, whose sense of romantic fidelity is remarkably tenuous: rare is the adult male with but one wife. Humenycky said every day brought her yet another proposal of marriage.

As for her Peace Corps work, it took a while for Humenycky to hit the mark. It didn't always seem that her first-world ways had a place in Togo's third-world economy. The bumpy ride ended when she met a group of independent coffee growers struggling to establish their business.

"We did some basic things together but to them it was huge." Proper accounting practices, use of the computer and marketing are not normally relevant to the Togoian business model.

Humenycky extended her stay in Togo an extra four months to help the group. She remains in contact with the seven-man, two-woman outfit via e-mail.

"I feel I'm so blessed," said Humenycky, who landed a job with a scientific research firm in Monroeville shortly after her return to the United States in January. "I saw what was possible."

Richard Robbins can be reached at rrobbins@tribweb.com or 724-836-5660.

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Story Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

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